Failure Mode and Effect Analysis or FMEA is a testing process that is used by manufacturers to find and prevent failures in both processes and products. It is considered a risk management tool and one of the best ways to prevent faulty products from reaching the market having an adverse effect on a company's image with the public and their overall bottom line. AS one might expect FMEA like many other stringent quality testing processes like HALT got its start with the testing of products being manufactured for the military and the aerospace industries. In particular military ordinance was tested to ensure it would hold up well under some very adverse conditions and still remain viable when the time came. The automobile industry quickly adopted the testing process as one of the many ways they use to ensure that the automobiles of today are a lot safer than those of just a few years ago. The main objective of FMEA is to prevent failures that could result in a wide variety of accidents or incidents that might end up with catastrophic results.

The emphasis of this system is not on corrective actions following a failure it is solely of prevention. Here companies who practice FMEA do not talk in terms of how to minimize risk they only consider how to completely eliminate any chance of risk no matter how small it might appear to be. Perhaps the easiest way to explain this is to say that a Corrective Action plan is concerned with the present and the failure that has already occurred along with finding ways to prevent it happening again. FMEA is concerned only with indentifying potential failures and making sure that there is no way for them to ever occur now or in the future removing all traces of risk involved in any product long before it gets into the hands of the end user. A FMEA team is usually made up of members of staff within the manufacturing facility and is a part of the design process as well as the actual manufacturing process of a particular product.

Once the product has been found to meet all the required standards and is approved for full production the FMEA team that was associated with it is usually disbanded and its members sent off to work on other projects. While it might seem like using an FMEA team to help in the development of a new product might add a significant cost to the project the reverse is more than often the case. If the manufacturer makes good use of the information supplied by the team, they can significantly reduced the costs associated with multiple redesigns while improving the corporate image with the public by manufacturing a much higher quality product that does not have to be continually replaced under warranty. If your manufacturing company needs training in how to set up an FMEA program and making sure the team members are well versed in how to do what it takes to ensure that all products meet the standards let Reliability Help train them for you. With many years of experience in the product testing business they can train your staff to help make sure that every product you make meets the best quality standards possible helping to keep your customers happy and your profits up.